The Imaginary Marriage eBook

Then suddenly Ellice broke away, and a few minutes
later was riding hard down the road to Starden.

It was always to Starden that she rode. Always
she passed the great gates of Starden Hall, yet never
even glanced at them. She rode into the little
village, propped her bicycle against the railings that
surrounded the old stocks that stood on the village
green, and there sat on a seat and watched the ducks
in the green village pond and the children playing
cricket. Then, after waiting perhaps an hour,
she would mount and ride slowly back to Buddesby again.

It was the programme that she carried out this morning.
It was twelve o’clock when she came in sight
of Buddesby village, a mile distant as yet.

“Missy! Missy!” Someone was calling.
Ellice slowed down and looked about her. On the
bank beside the road a man sat, and he was nursing
an ugly yellow lurcher dog in his arms.

“Missy!” the man called, and his voice
was broken and harsh with suffering.

It was Rundle, the poacher, and his dog, and there
was blood on Rundle’s hand, blood trickling
down from a wound in the dog’s side. The
man was holding the dog as he might have held a child.
The big ugly yellow head was against the man’s
breast, and in its agony the dog was licking the man’s
rough hand.

And watching, there came back to Ellice’s memory
what she had said of this man and his dog.

“You’ll do something for me, missy, something
as I—­I can’t do myself!” He
shuddered. “Will you ride on to Taylor’s
and ask him to come here and bring—­his
gun?”

“Why?”

“I—­I can’t do it myself!”

“He might be cured.”

“There’s only Mister Vinston, the Vet,
and he wouldn’t look at this poor tyke of mine.
He hates him too bad for that, because Snatcher killed
one of them fancy poodle dogs of his two years ago;
and Mr. Vinston ain’t never forgot it—­and
never will. He wouldn’t do nothing to save
Snatcher, miss. Ask Taylor to come and bring his
gun.”

Ellice nodded. She stretched out her hand and
touched the shaggy yellow head, and in her eyes was
infinite pity. Then she mounted the bicycle,
and rode like the wind to Buddesby. What she said
to Mr. Ralph Vinston, the smart young veterinary surgeon,
only she and Mr. Ralph Vinston knew.

He had refused definitely and decidedly. “It’ll
be a blessing to the place if the beast dies,”
he said. “You’d better take his message
to Taylor. The gun’s the best remedy for
Rundle’s accursed dog, Miss Ellice.”

And then the girl had talked to him, had talked with
flashing eyes and heaving breast, and the end of it
was that Ralph Vinston made a collection of surgical
instruments, bandages, and other necessaries, bundled
them into his little car, and was away down the road
with Ellice in company within ten minutes.